


Balm of Life

by BloodyJinxii



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Persona 5 Spoilers, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 19:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19302106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyJinxii/pseuds/BloodyJinxii
Summary: When he awakes, the Detective Prince is dead. Publicly declared missing. Gone. Erased from history and the minds of the public. So Goro packs up the few belongings he has, a few pairs of clothes, his toothbrush, a couple of old notebooks.And he runs.





	Balm of Life

**Author's Note:**

> (sticks leggy out real far) i wrote this in like 20 min bc i was pissed that so many people cast future!goro as a detective
> 
> it's super short and also i had no beta
> 
> enjoy

Goro Akechi lives, though not through any fault of his own.

 

He stumbles out of the National Diet Building, bruised and half broken, with Robin Hood’s impromptu Samarecarm doing little to quell the pain. He limps home, throws himself onto his futon and sleeps for two days, ignoring the forty-four phone calls his father and his associates had left him.

 

When he awakes, the Detective Prince is dead. Publicly declared missing. Gone. Erased from history and the minds of the public. So Goro packs up the few belongings he has, a few pairs of clothes, his toothbrush, a couple of old notebooks.

 

And he runs.

 

He takes the furthest train out of Tokyo and follows it to the end of the line. And when he gets there, he takes another, and another, until his train pass runs out and he ends up stranded in a small, backwater town with a vaguely familiar name at the base of a mountain that inspired so many others. He uses the last of his money to that up residence at the local Inn, and searches for odd jobs until he could afford to leave. But at night, monsters and demons plague his dreams, a stone-hard gaze or a hand reaching out towards his accompanying the moment he startles awake, drenched in sweat.

 

So in his spare time, he writes.

 

He writes for _hours._ He writes until his wrists ache at the slightest movement, writes until the ink dries from his pen and he’s left with nubs of pencils, erasers long since been used. He writes every thought that comes to mind, about chosen ones, and lying gods, about coffee and about cruelty. He writes about a villain who dreams himself to be a hero, who stands against a radically changing crowd, and only realizes the tide had turned when he was drowning beneath it. And when he can afford to spend time at an internet cafe, he makes his passages coherent, presentable, names and places changed into a world not quick like our own but one that still feels like his cold and empty home.

 

He submits under a pseudonym, not expecting an answer, until the anniversary of his father’s arrest, he is given an answer. And when the cherry blossoms had just started to bloom, he catches a glimpse of a plain cover in the window of the local bookstore.

 

Word of mouth, as he has come to understand, is certainly the best form of advertisement, and he soon finds his book in the hands of wide-eyed teenagers, and tired college students, in precocious children, and housewives who long for adventure. He doesn’t read the reviews, he doesn’t need to, with the amount of fanmail his agent politely (passive-aggressively) informs him he has. He never lets her give him any, but she manages to sneak one into his mail anyways.

 

Her name is Hibiki, and she is fourteen. She has no father, and she has only one friend in the protagonist of the tragic tale he wove, the one in the book she wore through the spine of, the pages falling out, and the cover half-torn. She is fourteen and she is in middle school, and she wants to know whether he lived or died at the end of the final chapter, for ending a story in the middle of a sentence isn’t very good writing, you know.

 

So, once more, Goro picks up a pen.

 

 

> _Yes, the protagonist died. He died like many do, in pursuit of a better understanding of the world and himself. He died like the moon dies every night so a new day may rise. He died, but he is not gone. He is succeeded by a new version of himself, a kinder, wiser version, who still has much to learn. And he’ll die again, and again as he changes and evolves into someone new. He lives on in his opponent, in you, and in me. And when he is reborn, and you are reborn, the world should be a kinder place for it._
> 
>  
> 
> _Does that answer your question?_
> 
>  
> 
> _Sincerely yours,_
> 
> _Crow_


End file.
